jigger:I guess I get it, but I kinda don't get it. When people begin discussing libertarianism, Ayn Rand sometimes becomes part of the conversation. Ayn Rand was not a libertarian and Objectivism is not libertarianism nor a form of it. She despised libertarians just like she despised most people.

What didn't she despise? Money? Violence? Had she lived long enough to discover it, I think she would have liked gangsta rap.

jigger:I guess I get it, but I kinda don't get it. When people begin discussing libertarianism, Ayn Rand sometimes becomes part of the conversation. Ayn Rand was not a libertarian and Objectivism is not libertarianism nor a form of it. She despised libertarians just like she despised most people.

There's a lot of overlap between both groups these days. That fact alone tells me how well informed and "deep" the people comprising both groups really are.

The label a lot of these Republicans-in-denial use is just "lipstick on a pig" basically.

whidbey:cybrwzrd: The whole idea of objectivism is that you have a right to work towards your own goals as long as you are not harming another through greed

But there are countless examples of big business corporations and individuals doing exactly that.

The current system isn't that vague. We have income tax and environmental laws. How, as a libertarian, would you justify keeping the statist structure in place to enforce those kinds of laws?

I maintain without the state, you can't enforce the laws.

To me and what seems to be market anarchists, the state isn't the court system, or the police, fire department etc.. The state is what allows the court and police jurisdiction over a given area. In my opinion, having competition even at that level is beneficial toward liberty. So we would allow Muslims their Sharia courts, and give people like Snowden an option of having an alternative court system locally instead of having to go to HK.

whidbey:cybrwzrd: The whole idea of objectivism is that you have a right to work towards your own goals as long as you are not harming another through greed

But there are countless examples of big business corporations and individuals doing exactly that.

The current system isn't that vague. We have income tax and environmental laws. How, as a libertarian, would you justify keeping the statist structure in place to enforce those kinds of laws?

I maintain without the state, you can't enforce the laws.

I'm likely wrong here, but the self-proclaimed libertarians that I have met would tell you that 'no state = no laws' is exactly their point. They really seem to believe that in the absence of a state, people will evolve their own laws, and enforce them personally.

Based on what Ishkur and cybrwzrd have said though, I doubt I was talking to real libertarians.

CheatCommando:Ishkur: cybrwzrd: He didn't harm anyone by blowing it up... The building was empty and noone was hurt.

Yes he did, he harmed the property owners, the builders, the contractors, the insurance doods, the marketers and realtors and people who had invested money into the project! That's their farking paycheck, and now things are tied up in courts and legal battles for years and their families are going to suffer because the project they worked so hard on was destroyed by a disgruntled architect. Roark is a god damn asshole. His actions harmed thousands of people.

Grand_Moff_Joseph:whidbey: cybrwzrd: The whole idea of objectivism is that you have a right to work towards your own goals as long as you are not harming another through greed

But there are countless examples of big business corporations and individuals doing exactly that.

The current system isn't that vague. We have income tax and environmental laws. How, as a libertarian, would you justify keeping the statist structure in place to enforce those kinds of laws?

I maintain without the state, you can't enforce the laws.

I'm likely wrong here, but the self-proclaimed libertarians that I have met would tell you that 'no state = no laws' is exactly their point. They really seem to believe that in the absence of a state, people will evolve their own laws, and enforce them personally.

Based on what Ishkur and cybrwzrd have said though, I doubt I was talking to real libertarians.

They can claim anything they want. For me, It seems that both the Social Libertarian and the AnCaps systems would have laws.

cybrwzrd:with as few laws as necessary to provide for a cohesive society

Like all reductionists, your ideas are naive. There is no magic bullet to find laws we don't need that aren't "load-bearing". We can't just start from scratch, there are 300 million people living here. If you fark up the system a little bit, you spread mass human suffering. The time for experimentation is past, it was the 18th century, and you are living in the grand experiment today. This is what we've got, unless you want another 100 million people to die in a war so we can get another different kind of government.

The stakes are too high for the kind of revolution you're looking for, and the payoff is low: so I can go buy whatever gun I want and shoot it into the air? So what? So I get to keep another 15% of my income? Big deal! The sort of people that would benefit from a revolution are dirt poor, and I never hear libertarians advocate for them, anyway.

Libertarian ideas are not worth dying for, and make no mistake: in order for them to be implemented even partway, millions would die. It's like changing what side of the road we drive on so everyone can get out on the curb side. 50,000 extra highway deaths the first year, and for what?

mmmk:whidbey: cybrwzrd: The whole idea of objectivism is that you have a right to work towards your own goals as long as you are not harming another through greed

But there are countless examples of big business corporations and individuals doing exactly that.

The current system isn't that vague. We have income tax and environmental laws. How, as a libertarian, would you justify keeping the statist structure in place to enforce those kinds of laws?

I maintain without the state, you can't enforce the laws.

To me and what seems to be market anarchists, the state isn't the court system, or the police, fire department etc.. The state is what allows the court and police jurisdiction over a given area. In my opinion, having competition even at that level is beneficial toward liberty. So we would allow Muslims their Sharia courts, and give people like Snowden an option of having an alternative court system locally instead of having to go to HK.

ME CROTCH THINKS HOW CANADA HANDLES "ABORIGINAL" RIGHTS IS STUPID. ME CROTCH NO WANT THAT IN SLIM TRIBE. WE LIKE TRUE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND EQUAL RIGHTS

Crotchrocket Slim:mmmk: whidbey: cybrwzrd: The whole idea of objectivism is that you have a right to work towards your own goals as long as you are not harming another through greed

But there are countless examples of big business corporations and individuals doing exactly that.

The current system isn't that vague. We have income tax and environmental laws. How, as a libertarian, would you justify keeping the statist structure in place to enforce those kinds of laws?

I maintain without the state, you can't enforce the laws.

To me and what seems to be market anarchists, the state isn't the court system, or the police, fire department etc.. The state is what allows the court and police jurisdiction over a given area. In my opinion, having competition even at that level is beneficial toward liberty. So we would allow Muslims their Sharia courts, and give people like Snowden an option of having an alternative court system locally instead of having to go to HK.

ME CROTCH THINKS HOW CANADA HANDLES "ABORIGINAL" RIGHTS IS STUPID. ME CROTCH NO WANT THAT IN SLIM TRIBE. WE LIKE TRUE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND EQUAL RIGHTS

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS FREEDOM TO WORSHIP SKY MAN AND SKY MAN SON IN WAY YOU LIKE ONLY. YOU NO HAVE RIGHT TO WORSHIP MOON MAN OR ANIMAL SPIRITS OR ANCESTORS INSTEAD. AND DEFINITELY NO HAVE RIGHT NOT TO WORSHIP AT ALL.

Mercutio74:Mrtraveler01: WinoRhino: Crude: Your website is dying. I couldn't be happier about that. (When articles have less than 50 - 100 comments on them, and most of those are from the same users, it's dead)

... and I should know! I spend all day reading the articles, counting the number of posts and analyzing their content! Since 2007!

Jesus, I didn't even catch that.

I've been on Fark for a little longer than he has (discovered it in March 2007) and I really can't tell a noticeable difference between Fark in 2007 and Fark today.

I think he's just being a drama queen just for the sake of being a drama queen.

And it does seem curiously vicious considering the site is free. It's not like Drew sneaks into your bedroom at night and rests his ballsack on your forehead. If anything, Drew's post admits that the mods who approve stuff for the poltics tab generally do a shiat job.

Politics tab is a problematic thing on a site like this - all the other tabs will have trolling, misleading headlines, etc. and that works because geek topics, weird news, entertainment, etc. is not "serious business", generally (and when there are the more serious newsflash stuff it tends to be moderated more aggressively). Politics is a mix of both serious and silly interweaving so it is always going to be a bit of a mess - especially on the internet where the tone of comments made by mostly strangers who you don't know/remember their actual politics is hard to read, so sarcasm, hyperbole, devil's advocacy and general argumentativeness, plus all the standard issues of misreading/misunderstanding, massive assumptions about all the views of someone based on a single sentence comment, never mind the trolling and sockpuppetry/strawmanning that goes on.

CheatCommando:I was not aware that criticizing one implied endorsing the other. But then, I don't go around trying to make the world simpler than it is.

Dude, this thread dwarfs the NSA spying threads, all of the scandal threads, republican-hatred threads, democrat-hatred threads. Just step back and think about that. All Libertarianism really says at its core is "people should have freedom up until the point it infringes on someone else's freedom." Everything else is either interpretation and policy proposals which quite frankly aren't going to happen, especially the crazy ones. Or, it's politicians hijacking something something about freedom they don't understand to justify their own asinine ideas that aren't about freedom. But again, we're not going to see a Libertarian president in 2016, and best case scenario for Libertarians is like one dude in the House and maybe a Lt Governor somewhere. There are way more secret fascists in government than secret libertarians.

So something is truly broken with political discourse when THIS is what riles people up.

One thing I love about this thread is how people will add 1 to the total amount of comments to express their disgust that the comment count is so high. Also, anyone who thinks this thread is more about libertarianism vs reality than it is about spontaneous group caveman language is probably not looking carefully enough at the Fark demographic.

GOONGA NO WANT GO BACK TO MANY MOONS AGO. GOONGA LIKE CAVEBOOK AND MAMMOTHSPACE. GOONGA HEAR FROM CAVEBOOK THAT STONEBAMA NOT LET INVISIBLE SKY FAIRY RITUAL IN BIG CAVE CLUB FORCE. WHY NO LIKE SKY FAIRY STONEBAMA? GOONGA GO BACK TO BOOL OROCKLY CAVE PAINTINGS FOR TRUTH.

Mercutio74:One thing I love about this thread is how people will add 1 to the total amount of comments to express their disgust that the comment count is so high. Also, anyone who thinks this thread is more about libertarianism vs reality than it is about spontaneous group caveman language is probably not looking carefully enough at the Fark demographic.

ME CROTCH HAVE SEEN MANY SUCH THREADS IN PAST. THIS THREAD JUST A REPEAT OF SAME CONVO WERE ME CROTCH NOT SPEAKING GRIMLOCK STYLE

mccallcl:Libertarian ideas are not worth dying for, and make no mistake: in order for them to be implemented even partway, millions would die.

A "partway" implementation of Libertarian ideas might be:

1) equalize wage tax and capital gains, remove all loopholes especially of the corporate variety. Make it easier to start a small business.2) No domestic spying - enshrine privacy as a fundamental right, if the 4th wasn't clear enough. Maybe update the 4th amendment to include digital/online. We shouldn't have "warrantless" anything.3) No foreign wars unless really, really, really necessary. No bullshiat "aid" or "CIA training operatives" or "arms sales" to random factions in random countries.4) Transparent government, if not to us citizens at least to Congress and our representatives.5) Break up bank monopolies (especially where a bank does both investment andpersonal banking). Bank monopolies are so anti-free market it's not even funny.6) stop war on drugs. actually, stop war on any idea. only declare war on countries, organizations, or groups. and then set some exit criteria7) balance the budget, work to reduce the debt. not just the deficit, but the debt.

m00:CheatCommando: I was not aware that criticizing one implied endorsing the other. But then, I don't go around trying to make the world simpler than it is.

Dude, this thread dwarfs the NSA spying threads, all of the scandal threads, republican-hatred threads, democrat-hatred threads. Just step back and think about that. All Libertarianism really says at its core is "people should have freedom up until the point it infringes on someone else's freedom." Everything else is either interpretation and policy proposals which quite frankly aren't going to happen, especially the crazy ones. Or, it's politicians hijacking something something about freedom they don't understand to justify their own asinine ideas that aren't about freedom. But again, we're not going to see a Libertarian president in 2016, and best case scenario for Libertarians is like one dude in the House and maybe a Lt Governor somewhere. There are way more secret fascists in government than secret libertarians.

So something is truly broken with political discourse when THIS is what riles people up.

This dwarfs them because a certain silliness erupted and was run with. Fully 80 percent of the comments (including some of mine) in here have nothing to do with the topic except in the most tenuous way. I would have to ask if you have even given the most cursory of readings of this thing if you feel that way.